The reason this story goes on and on is that I've never really thought of it as a story, with a plot and a beginning and end, so much as an ongoing relationship that I can visit from time to time. I had no end in mind when I posted chapter 1 and I still don't know how I'll end this. There will still be several more chapters, but I'm starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Sincere thanks to those who've been sticking around and reviewing all this time :)

Jane crosses her boots up on the coffee table, nursing a beer. Work ran extra long for her today; your dinner had to be reheated and lost something in the translation, but you're both too tired to be picky.

You sink into the cushion next to her.

"I feel like I've hardly seen you this week."

She plops a hand on top of yours. "I know. It's been nuts."

You've had three crime scenes and their autopsies (none of which were Jane's cases), a presentation to prepare for (the challenges of autopsy at advanced stages of decomposition), and an all-day conference in Springfield (which required your attendance even though a cardboard cutout of you would've been equally effective).

Jane's had a trial to testify in, and a hectic investigation that's been invading her life at the most inopportune moments, stealing her from sound sleep and from the dinner table.

"How's your presentation coming?"

"I added a lot more photos. Maybe I could do a quick rehearsal with you this weekend?"

She rubs her eyes, yawning. "Sure."

"Why don't you go to bed? You have a few hours to catch up on."

"Mm. I wanna just enjoy doing nothing for a little bit first."

Both of you are too tired to be intimate, and knowing this week, one of your phones would surely ring if you tried. Just enjoying a moment of downtime together is enough.

You vocalize a note of understanding, sliding your fingers between hers.

"You got a couple years left in your term as M.E., right?"

"M-hm."

"Think you wanna do another term after that?"

"Probably not... I'm not sure," you answer after a long think. "It's very rewarding, but after that long I could foresee being ready for something less demanding. Why?"

She shrugs. "Just thinking about what I could do."

"About what?"

"Work." She sips her beer.

"What about it?"

"I mean, something else I could do. It'd have to be something in law enforcement. Might be a tad late to start a career in the NHL."

You pause for a long time, but come up empty. "Wh.. what?"

"I have no idea yet. Just giving it some thought."

"Hang on, what are you talking about?"

"We had a whole thing about this," she answers, brows rising when your blank look continues. "In the closet? About how my job is dangerous.. about protecting you..?"

"That's what you thought that meant?" you ask incredulously, mouth hanging open. "I didn't ask you to quit your job!"

"I know you didn't, and I didn't mean like quitting tomorrow. Just.. thinking about something else for, I dunno, the nearish future, instead of aiming for finishing out my twenty. Especially if you wanted to do something else after your term's up."

You shake your head as if to rouse yourself from a bizarre dream. "Am I hearing this right?"

"I don't get why this is such a shock," she frowns quizzically. "You asked me to protect you. I answered you, yes. Like, a million times. Were we just supposed to be saying some pretty words back and forth for fun?"

"You made me ask like that. I thought it was a turn-on for you or something," you shrug. "Considering the way the rest of the evening went..."

In an instant she gains but loses a spark of outrage. "Well, it.. did kinda get.." she mumbles, scratching the back of her neck. "But that didn't mean I didn't mean it."

"Jane," you shake your head and hands, wanting to start this all over. "All I was asking was that you not risk any extra danger beyond what your job actually requires. And I was considering apologizing for asking that! At no point did I ask you to give up your job."

"I know that's not what you said. But how can I say yes to just what you said, and not to everything it really means? No extra risks - fine. But danger is a part of my job. Would you be any less alone if I died taking a regular risk than an extra one?"

That request really had been a slippery slope, and you don't know what to do about the fact that she's slipped all the way down. At the risk of emphatically agreeing with her point, you force your mouth closed instead.

"Of course I wish you were safer. But not at the price of your happiness. Not at the price of being resented for taking away what you love."

She frowns faintly. "I wouldn't resent you."

You scan for resentment, and find none. But that can't be right. Maybe your scanner is broken.

"What about your mother?"

"W.." Jane's squinted gaze floats confusedly across the room. "What about her?"

"She's always worried sick about your safety - Frankie's too - and begs you to quit, and you hate that."

She lets a laugh out of her nostrils, like that had been cute. "It's not the same."

"It's exactly the same! We both love you and want you to be safe. How could I think you'd feel any differently just because it's me?"

"My mother has next to no faith in me as a cop because no matter what I do, she'll always see me as a little girl. Maybe that's how being a parent is... I don't know. But the more she nagged, the more I'd cling to it, the more she made me have to prove I could do it.

"It's not like that with you." Her fingertips toy with the beads on your dress sleeve. "You see me for me. And you respect my work. And you have faith in me to do it well. You worry too, but you protect me in ways that don't undermine what I'm good at and what I love doing. You're not trying to pry this job out of my hands - you support me and work with me and make me better at it. You let me hold on or let go, on my terms."

You know you're not listening. You know all you're doing is waiting to do blurt out when it's your turn again, desperate to clear yourself.

"I do respect your work. It's so important, and you're so good at it. I don't want you to stop doing it," you shake your head. "And I don't like you putting an un-askable question in my mouth. Jane, that job is everything to you. I wouldn't dare ask you to give it up."

"Un-askable?" Her eyes study you again for a long time. Though tired, they are no less beautiful or penetrating. Her scanner definitely works.

She sets down her bottle and pulls a knee up onto the couch, turning more toward you. Runs the back of her finger down your forearm, thinking.

"Have you ever asked anyone to choose you?"

It's not what you expected.

"Choose me instead of who?" you ask.

"Anyone. Anything. Have you ever seriously asked anyone in your entire life for what you needed if that meant change for them? Change to their schedule, or their career, or life? I can't remember anything you've told me that gives me the feeling you have."

That question requires no reflection at all to answer.

"You can't ask that of someone," you scoff in confusion. "You're making it sound like a sad thing."

You've never thought to be sad about it. It's just how life works.

"Why not?"

You frown at her asking such an obvious question. "When a person's career is their passion, their purpose, something they've worked toward all their life... it's who they are. You can't ask someone to change who they are for you."

"Did you ask someone to choose you and they said no? Or did you never ask?"

That's a question you could consider getting ruffled at, but she's asking it in earnest, and her eyes are too soft.

To be as important to someone as their career is the maximum amount you have always considered possible. To be solidly second place is the maximum you've ever personally hoped to attain. To demand to be placed above that career is not valid. It is an impossible request. Rude and foolish.

Of course you never asked.

She might be referring to past relationships, but all you can think of is the paneling on the doors of your father's study. There was a place where a knot in the wood grain looked a little like a pair of eyes, and you'd stare at them while you stood there rehearsing what you'd say to justify your interruption.

And of your mother's voice on the phone, two rooms away, agreeing to something that meant another month out of town. Of feeling a little crestfallen, even though she had no way of knowing you hated that, because you'd failed to get up the courage to say so. There just never seemed to be a space in the conversation for anything off-script.

"There was no reason to ask," you answer quietly, fidgeting with your fingers. "If you have to make people choose... you already know you wouldn't be their choice."

"True. But that's different from asking where their priorities lie. Do you think I sat there in your closet and consciously reordered all my priorities, then and there? Or that I thought you asked me to? That's not even possible, I don't think."

She pokes your knee in an unnecessary bid for your attention. "When I met you, my job was my unbudgeable number one, and I was completely sure it always would be. That stuff in the closet.. that wasn't me deciding for my job not to be number one anymore. That was me realizing it already isn't."

You're still staring at your knee where she touched it, and she lifts your chin until you see her smiling gently.

"You are. I know you asked me to protect you, not to choose you, but aren't they the same?"

Too slippery. "Jane, I..."

"That's why I wanted you to ask me - so I could answer. I choose you. That's what that meant."

That's... big. That's wow big.

"...we can do it over, if we weren't on the same page the first time," she offers.

You know this is the part where you should be touched and say Oh Jane you're so wonderful and hug her and maybe reevaluate your entire understanding of love. That's what she expects. Her eyes are warm and waiting to collect that kind of a reaction from you. And she's right to expect it. That was big.

But none of that's happening. You're sort of frozen between touched and baffled and panicked. But why? You just stare back, searching uselessly for words.

"I don't want loving me to mean being afraid," she adds, maybe to fill the space you're leaving. Her thumb brushes across your fingers. "You've never done that to me and I can't go on doing it you. I want you to feel as safe being with me, as you've made me feel with you."

You shut your eyes. That only makes it harder to say the only thing you've thought of to say. "You wouldn't be happy doing something else."

"I could be. This job was my dream... and then my crutch. But you healed me so I didn't need the crutch anymore. Now I can do it just because I love it again. And now I'm in a place where can admit it's not something I could do til I'm old. It takes a toll. You know? Stress, crazy hours.. the stuff that's gonna be in my head forever. I could see being ready to move on before long." She lets out a breath and a careful grin. "That's the first time I've said that out loud.

"Maura, I love my job," she says, taking your hand. "I really love my job, and it's been a huge part of me for as long as I can remember. But you're an even bigger part of me now. And I love you more. I don't have to be a detective to be happy, as long as I get to come home to you."

That was sweet. An incredibly sweet answer to something you only accidentally kind of asked for, which you never, ever would've on purpose.

You wish that real life had a pause button. That you could have a minute to think without every passing second adding to the mutual stress of someone waiting for your reaction.

She dips her head a little to get a better look into your eyes. "You okay? This.. this isn't going how I thought."

"I'm sorry," you smile, shaking your head. It still takes you too long to replay what she just said in an attempt to form a response. She said she loves you more than her job. That's not something that requires a rebuttal. Just accept that part, and go from there. "I love you. I don't know what to say."

The hug you push into is both completely genuine and completely a stall for time, and she must know so, but she lets you have her arms to stall in. It's strange that she can provide a form of privacy from herself. You really do love her. You've never felt so close to anyone.

Finally, you locate the true origin of your reaction. It's not all fear of resentment. It's about how close you feel to her.

It's that your career has always been your top priority, and you felt a kinship with Jane because she was the same way. And now you find yourself the recipient of a profession of her love for you above all else, and without any change on your part, now that makes you suddenly callous in comparison.

That makes you the one hard at work behind the door with the wood grain eyes. The one taking the phonecall in the other room.

You spend an agonizing minute trying to think of a way to tell Jane that you love her too, but without lying and saying that your career isn't still your top priority. Go ahead. Tell her she's entitled to the same measure of love that caused you to grow up with an ache. The same measure that still makes you cry on occasion, as a grown woman of nearly forty.

But you're getting nowhere, and you realize it's because that's not accurate. That's obsolete information from a years-old file in your brain.

As if shut off by a switch, your panic dries up, and you pull back and look into her face.

"What happened there?" Jane asks curiously.

You remember your first visit to her apartment. The day she confided in you about having trouble watching your incisions.

"I would get a different job for you," you realize aloud.

She looks at you a quiet, understanding way. "You don't have to say that because I said it. I know being the Medical Examin-"

"I'm not saying it because you said it. I'm saying it because I would. I just didn't realize it until right now." Your brow creases as you think of all she's been through. "You could so easily have despised the entire medical profession. Suffered iatrophobia. You could've feared me in my work environment and never been my friend at all."

Hoyt fancied himself a doctor. That theme undoubtedly must've made the extensive and invasive medical care Jane required seem like little else than some horrific continuation of his torture.

You wonder whether your being a doctor had ever seemed like a cruel irony.

"If my being a doctor caused you distress... or made you feel less safe with me... I would be something else." You cup her cheek, thrilled that this feels completely right to say, instead of the itchy half-truth you were dreading. "You're more important to me than my career. Than anything." You laugh weightlessly as this notion sinks in, and it makes her grin. "You already have been, but I didn't know I could do that until just now."

You've broken rules. You feel like an outlaw. A human. And now that you know it's possible, you believe her when she says she loves you that much. It's not scary. It's exciting. Freeing.

If only you could replay this whole conversation. By struggling against the whole thing, you're sure you missed some sweet and important things.

You hug her again, better. "I'm sorry I acted strangely. I was afraid we weren't on the same page, but we are. I just didn't realize what page."

She grins, running a thumb along your cheekbone. "I love that you're a doctor."

"I love that you're a detective. And for right now, I love our lives just how they are."

She gives your lips a happy kiss. "Me too."

I really hated the canon ending of R&I, and this is my attempt at a scenario where I don't hate the idea of them moving on from their jobs, especially where Jane's safety is a motive. Idk. (Full disclosure: I did not actually watch the last episode(s))